Authors: James S Robbins
The Real Custer (18 page)
The couple returned to New York City to take in some shows before beginning their leisurely journey south to Washington, when they were “brought to earth by orders to give up our brief play spell and go to the front.”
34
W
hile George and Libbie were celebrating their nuptials, moves were afoot to sideline the newlywed general from one of the most dramatic actions of the war. Kilpatrick was planning a daring raid on Richmond, in which Custer would be given only a supporting role. Libbie later recalled that her “military life began and ended with the actual knowledge of perfidy in officers.”
1
Not everyone had been pleased with Custer's rapid rise in rank and national fame. Bugler Joe Fought noted that “all the other officers were exceedingly jealous of [Custer].”
2
Libbie wrote that the “usual swarm of enemies presented him with maligning and falsehoods, and there were deprecations of his ability.” Such jealousies and rivalries were common during the war, and the young, dashing Custer was a special target for envy.
Kilpatrick was particularly displeased with the notoriety and success of his young brigade commander. In battle after battle, Custer was heralded as a hero while Kilpatrick bore the criticism, justly or not. An August 1863 newspaper profile of Custer gave a slap to Kilpatrick, saying, “a Cavalry Division General rarely charges. It would interfere with his duty. He sits either on his horse or a fence, smokes and claps his hands when a thing is handsomely done.” The paper noted that elevating Kilpatrick to division command “has taken an electric leader of a charge from the service. It cannot also afford to lose Custer.”
3
From Gettysburg through the Buckland Races, it seemed that Custer could do no wrong, and Kilpatrick was tinged with failure.
Kilpatrick was brave, and he behaved daringly in cavalry raids during the early years of the war, though usually at high cost to his commands. While bold, he had not shone as a division commander. He achieved high rank less through battlefield achievements than through ruthless self-promotion driven by his boundless ambition. Kilpatrick planned to make a career in politics after the war, and he thought that fame derived from battle might take him all the way to the White House.
Unlike Custer, however, who had ample natural charisma, Kilpatrick was not a charmer. He had an intense, angular face framed by scraggly facial hair, which grew oddly from his jawline. A fellow officer described him as a “wiry, restless, undersized man with black eyes [and] a lantern jaw.”
4
Theodore Lyman said he was a “frothy braggart without brains” and that “it is hard to look at [Kilpatrick] without laughing.”
5
Kilpatrick also got into more trouble than Custer. He was a hard drinker and was detained for slandering government officials while on a bender in Washington. He was also suspected (though not convicted) of taking kickbacks from horse brokers providing mounts for his command.
Kilpatrick had married his West Point sweetheart, Alice Nailer, the day he graduated, and they had a son together. But he kept company with loose women during the war, which did not help his reputation.
Kilpatrick and Custer may have competed for the affections of an attractive young nurse from Cambridge named Anna Elinor “Emma” Jones, who was, in her own words, “a companion to the various commanding officers . . . a private friend or companion.” She had appeared one day in the spring of 1863 at the headquarters of cavalry division commander Major General Julius Stahel, “ingratiated herself into the favor of the General,” by one report, “and received an honorary appointment as a member of his staff. Anna rejoiced in the soubriquet of âMajor,' and as âMajor Jones' became an institution in the army.” She became Stahel's constant companion and “thus lived and flourished. Every one knew Major Jones; officers would doff their hats, and privates would stand at full âpresent,' as she rode by in military feminine dignity.” When Stahel was relieved in June 1863, “Annie joined her fortunes with the young and gallant Custer, with whom she remained, retaining her rank and title.” But Kilpatrick became jealous of her attentions to George and accused her of being a rebel spy. “Her whole object and purpose of being with the army seemed to be to distinguish herself by some deed of daring,” Custer wrote. “In this respect alone she seemed to be insane.”
Major Jones was removed from the command under an order banning all women from such unofficial positions, and she went off to adventures elsewhere. She boasted of her relationships with many general officers, but Custer said Anna's “claim of intimacy with me and General Kilpatrick is simply untrue.”
6
Kilpatrick's wife, Alice, meanwhile, died of influenza in November 1863, and two months later their infant son perished.
Kilpatrick's Richmond raid originated with President Lincoln's desire to mount a cavalry operation to distribute copies of his December 8, 1863, amnesty and reconstruction proclamation. The president felt the document had received insufficient attention in the South and, for some
reason, believed Yankee raiders might be able to get the word out. On February 12, Kilpatrick briefed the president and Secretary of War Stanton on a more ambitious plan. He suggested bypassing Lee's army encamped around Fredericksburg and mounting a swift surprise attack on Richmond. One column would attack the city from the north, and a second, smaller strike force would cross the James River and enter it from the south. Along the way the Union troops would destroy rail lines and other infrastructure, disrupt communication with Lee's forces, free Union prisoners at Belle Isle and Libby Prison, and sow confusion and chaos inside the lightly defended Confederate capital.
7
Lincoln and Stanton signed off on the plan, though it met resistance from General Pleasonton, who told Stanton it was not feasible. But the White House favored the raid, and Kilpatrick bet Pleasonton $5,000 that he would pull it off.
Pleasonton's concerns were well founded. Even with most of the Army of Northern Virginia in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, Richmond's defenses were not as sparse as Kilpatrick seemed to believe. Three weeks earlier, Major General Benjamin F. Butler, in command of the Army of the James near Williamsburg, launched an expedition against Richmond with a similar aim. A brigade of cavalry moved northwest up the peninsula on February 6, intending to charge across the Chickahominy River at Bottom Bridge, then dash into Richmond to free prisoners and “tear up things generally.” But the next day, to their surprise, the cavalrymen found the bridge planks taken up and the crossing stoutly defended by Confederate artillery, with nearby fords manned by rebel troops. Their mission thwarted, the raiders turned back to Williamsburg.
8
Custer might have expected to lead the strike force hitting Richmond from the south. Instead, Kilpatrick gave that honor to twenty-one-year-old Colonel Ulric Dahlgren. Dahlgren was the son of Union Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren, the head of Navy ordnance and developer of the
“Dahlgren gun.” Ulric was a handsome, dashing, socially and politically connected young man who was charting a future in law when the war broke out. He joined the Army in the spring of 1861 and was commissioned a captain at age nineteen. Like Custer he served as a staff officer to several generals and engaged in the same types of high-risk adventures that made Custer famous. Notably, in November 1862, Dahlgren led sixty cavalrymen on a raid into Fredericksburg prior to General Ambrose Burnside's disastrous assault. He spent three days riding in and out of the town, gathering intelligence and prisoners, and dodging rebel fire in the city streets. Later, after the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, he proposed a similar raid into Richmond, which Hooker, still smarting from the failure of Stoneman's Raid that April, rejected.
Dahlgren was a standout at the Battle of Brandy Station, where he attached himself to the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry. General Pleasonton wrote that his “dashing bravery and cool intelligence are only equaled by his varied accomplishments,” and the
New York Times
wrote that he was “a model of cool and dauntless bravery.” As the Battle of Gettysburg commenced, Dahlgren scouted behind enemy lines and captured communiqués from Jefferson Davis intended for Robert E. Lee. This intelligence, which revealed there were no further rebel reinforcements headed north, was credited with influencing Meade's decision to fight it out on Cemetery Ridge. During the rebel retreat, Dahlgren spontaneously joined the 18th Pennsylvania, part of Kilpatrick's division, in an attack on Confederate cavalry in the streets of Hagerstown. Dahlgren was wounded in the leg during the wild urban fight, and he calmly reported to Kilpatrick afterward with blood leaking from his boot, before passing out. He lost his right foot and part of his leg, but while convalescing in his family home in Washington, D.C., Secretary of War Stanton personally delivered his colonel's commission.
Kilpatrick encountered Dahlgren at a Washington social event as plans for the Richmond raid were taking shape and offered him the
command of the second strike force. The column was slated to follow a route similar to the plan Dahlgren had proposed to Hooker a year earlier. “There is a grand raid to be made,” Dahlgren wrote his father days before the mission began, “and I am to have a very important command. If successful, it will be the grandest thing on record; and if it fails, many of us will âgo up.' I may be captured, or I may be âtumbled over'; but it is an undertaking that if I were not in, I should be ashamed to show my face again. . . . If we do not return, there is no better place to âgive up the ghost.'”
9
But the “grandest thing on record” was not to include Custer. He was shunted off to a diversionary attack, leading a picked force deep into enemy territory in the direction of Charlottesville. Ostensibly his mission was to cut the Orange and Alexandria Railroad between Charlottesville and Gordonsville, which would sever rail communications between Richmond and Lynchburg to the south, and also between Lee's army and the capital. Custer was instructed to cut telegraph lines, capture rebel stores, take prisoners, and generally create chaos. But Custer's most critical objective was to fix rebel attention west, drawing forces away from Richmond to open the way for Kilpatrick's raiders. It was a dangerous mission, and one trooper noted to Kilpatrick, “It looks as if there is not much chance for Custer.” Kilpatrick replied, “What of it?”
10
On February 28, Custer set out toward Charlottesville on the James City road with 1,500 men and a section of artillery.
11
To add insult to injury, Kilpatrick had assigned the choice men of the Michigan Brigade to his own command, leaving Custer with a force he had not previously commanded. He drove south, crossing the Rapidan and Ravenna Rivers over several days, fighting a few skirmishes, and making “as much noise as several batteries of artillery could consistently make,” in order to draw maximum rebel attention.
12
Resistance was slight until they encountered elements of Stuart's cavalry three miles outside Charlottesville. Custer's
men charged and routed the rebels, driving them off and overrunning a camp of sixty men. According to one account, it was “one of the boldest fights our cavalry has made during the war.”
13
However, Stuart's cavalry soon rallied, and rebel infantry converged on the scene by rail. Custer withdrew across the Ravenna, destroying a bridge and three flour mills, and set off for the Rapidan as night approached. Cold rain mixed with sleet fell steadily. In the darkness, the Federal column took a wrong turn and blundered into a muddy ravine, which stopped them for the night. By morning, Custer discovered that large numbers of rebels were closing behind him, and another force was concentrated ahead near his intended crossing at Burton's Ford.
